Heartbeat Of Wounded Knee

The long-held idea was that Native American life essentially ended with the U.S. Cavalry’s
1890 massacre of more than 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee. Melding history with reportage
and memoir, David Treuer uncovers a different narrative, in which the depredations of each
era also spawned new modes of survival: The seizures of land gave rise to increasingly
sophisticated legal and political maneuvering. The forced assimilation of children at
government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Not despite
but rather because of American Indians’ intense struggles to preserve their tribes, their
cultures, and their very existence, the true story is that of a resilient people’s unprecedented
resourcefulness and reinvention.